Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Martijn Verburg

JavaOne Rock Stars,
conceived in 2005, are the top-rated speakers at each JavaOne
Conference. They are awarded by their peers, who, through conference
surveys, recognize them for their outstanding sessions and speaking
ability. Over the years many of the world’s leading Java developers have
been so recognized.

Martijn Verburg has, in recent years, established himself as an
important mover and shaker in the Java community. His “Diabolical
Developer” session at the JavaOne 2011 Conference got people’s attention
by identifying some of the worst practices Java developers are prone to
engage in. Among other things, he is co-leader and organizer of the
thriving London Java User Group (JUG) which has more than 2,500 members,
co-represents the London JUG on the Executive Committee of the Java
Community Process, and leads the global effort for the Java User Group
“Adopt a JSR” and “Adopt OpenJDK” programs.

Career highlights
include overhauling technology stacks and SDLC practices at Mizuho
International, mentoring Oracle on technical community management, and
running off shore development teams for AIG. He is currently CTO at
jClarity, a start-up focusing on automating optimization for Java/JVM
related technologies, and Product Advisor at ZeroTurnaround. He
co-authored, with Ben Evans, "The Well-Grounded Java Developer"
published by Manning and, as a leading authority on technical team
optimization, he is in high demand at major software conferences.

Verburg is participating in five sessions, a busy man indeed. Here they are:

CON6152 - Modern Software Development Antipatterns (with Ben Evans)

UGF10434 - JCP and OpenJDK: Using the JUGs’ “Adopt” Programs in Your Group (with Csaba Toth)

When I asked Verburg about the biggest mistakes Java developers tend to make, he listed three:

A lack of communication -- Software development is far more a
social activity than a technical one; most projects fail because of
communication issues and social dynamics, not because of a bad technical
decision. Sadly, many developers never learn this lesson.

No source control -- Developers simply storing code in local filesystems and emailing code in order to integrate

Design-driven Design -- The need for some developers to cram
every design pattern from the Gang of Four (GoF) book into their source
code

All of which raises the question: If these practices are so bad,
why do developers engage in them? “I've seen a wide gamut of reasons,”
said Verburg, who lists them as:

* They were never taught at high school/university that their bad habits were harmful.* They weren't mentored in their first professional roles.* They've lost passion for their craft.* They're being deliberately malicious!* They think software development is a technical activity and not a social one.* They think that they'll be able to tidy it up later.

A couple of key confusions and misconceptions beset Java developers, according to Verburg.

“With Java and the JVM in particular I've seen a couple of trends,”
he remarked. “One is that developers think that the JVM is a magic box
that will clean up their memory, make their code run fast, as well as
make them cups of coffee. The JVM does help in a lot of cases, but bad
code can and will still lead to terrible results! The other trend is to
try and force Java (the language) to do something it's not very good at,
such as rapid web development. So you get a proliferation of overly
complex frameworks, libraries and techniques trying to get around the
fact that Java is a monolithic, statically typed, compiled, OO
environment. It's not a Golden Hammer!”

I asked him about the
keys to running a good Java User Group. “You need to have a ‘Why,’” he
observed. “Many user groups know what they do (typically, events) and
how they do it (the logistics), but what really drives users to join
your group and to stay is to give them a purpose. For example, within
the LJC we constantly talk about the ‘Why,’ which in our case is several
whys:

* Re-ignite the passion that developers have for their craft* Raise the bar of Java developers in London* We want developers to have a voice in deciding the future of Java* We want to inspire the next generation of tech leaders* To bring the disparate tech groups in London together* So we could learn from each other* We believe that the Java ecosystem forms a cornerstone of our society today -- we want to protect that for the future

Looking ahead to Java 8 Verburg expressed excitement about Lambdas.

“I
cannot wait for Lambdas,” he enthused. “Brian Goetz and his group are
doing a great job, especially given some of the backwards compatibility
that they have to maintain. It's going to remove a lot of boiler plate
and yet maintain readability, plus enable massive scaling.”

Check
out Martijn Verburg at JavaOne if you get a chance, and, stay tuned for
a longer interview yours truly did with Martijn to be publish on
otn/java some time after JavaOne.